Day 20 Salem: More to see

July 23, 2017

We slept in (hurray for blackout curtains!) and ate breakfast at the hotel, then set out to find Bush Park where the Art Fair and Festival was being held.

a little bench we saw on the way to the Art Fair - it was a tiny little bench, for dolls - so cute!

It was a lovely morning for a walk, not too hot yet, and we arrived to find an entire park given over to displays - 200 of them! The $5.00 admission was well spent as we wandered around for several hours admiring the craftsmanship and originality of so many artists.

Jim checking out a cool mirror with an amazing frame around it

So many displays to look at - it took a long time to walk through it

Jim was really interested in a bike art booth, where the artist had taken apart bike parts and created some fascinating art work. Stored safely away up in BC is a picture that Jim had created a couple years ago using a similar technique and I can see that when we return home, he will be hunting up more old used bike parts to create new things.

I was enthralled with the work of another artist who took old spoons, knives and other kitchen utensils and created metal sculptures of birds and other animals. It was quite fascinating to see how he could take something we use everyday and make it into something unique and beautiful.

All of this is repurposed utensils - amazing!

We had seen some very cool hats on our way in, and I tried several on, but of course, they were highly impractical for this trip, so I told the woman I couldn't buy one. She informed me that the hats were foldable and could indeed, travel well.

checking out the hat displays - this one was cute but not so very practical, despite being foldable

I thought about it as we walked and looked at the many displays, and on our way out, bought myself a hat that I hope will come in handy as we continue to make our way down the sunny, hot coast.

After a short nap back in our nice, cool room, we headed over to the Marco Polo restaurants, near our hotel. It was an older restaurant serving a variety of food, but mostly Chinese. We both ordered and couldn't believe the size of the portions when they came! Jim managed to get through most of his, but my Kung Pow chicken was just too much and we ended up getting take-out containers to take away and hopefully eat for lunch tomorrow on the road.

After dinner we walked to the capital buildings. Gerald had told Jim that there was a tree planted here that had been a seed taken up on the Apollo 14 mission and we were keen to find it. Jim stopped to ask another person there if he had see it. Tom, as it turns out, was also visiting Salem from Houston, Texas and didn't know about the tree but was excited to see it as well. We split up to look and quickly Tom called us over. Sure enough, there was this very very tall tree that had been planted in the 1971 with a plaque explaining that Astronaut Stuart Roosa had donated the seed to the city of Salem. How cool is that!

We spent some time chatting with Tom who was enjoying the relative cool of the Pacific Northwwest to the temperature in his home state at the moment. We can relate, having heard from Annie about how hot it gets down there! It was great meeting yet another traveler and getting to know him a little. Hope you make it back up to Canada again soon, Tom!

Tom, who hails from Texas. We talked about getting the National Park Senior pass for $10.00. He proudly showed not only his National Park pass but his Texas Park pass as well!

Back in our room, we spent some time going over our route for tomorrow before hitting the hay. Funnily enough, another night went by with us not even thinking about turning on th tv that was in our hotel room. My how we have changed!

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